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From "The FNaF Timeline Illustrated" by NoodleBot
"Everything [in Silent Hill] is drenched in symbolism; the basic monsters are all suspiciously effeminate, with the exception of Pyramid Head, an uber-masculine powerhouse repeatedly seen plunging his massive throbbing knife into the other monsters' moist quivering bodies, which obviously symbolizes... neo-conservative imperialism."

Often in Psychological Horror there are pervasive anxieties that haunt the mind of the protagonist, and a common element of this sort of horror is the Mental Monster. Born from his/her inner turmoil, it is a monstrous form of Allegorical Character, in fact being the protagonist's personal fears, guilt insecurities, frustrations, desires, trauma, or grief made flesh, and often tailored specifically to frighten and negatively affect that person.

The monsters' designs and mannerisms typically follow the Rule of Symbolism. For example, if a character suffers from depression to the point of suicidal urges and drowning their sorrows in beer, their monsters will tend to look and act just as suicidal, drunk, and miserable as them, sporting a metaphorical design that reminds you of several methods of suicide, and keen on driving them into killing themself, or giving them an Ironic Death by, for example, literally drowning them in alcohol. If they have suffered from bullying or abuse in the past, expect a twisted representation of the offender to haunt them at some point. If they feel exceptionally guilty over something they did, such as letting Gwen Stacy die, expect an utterly deranged specter of Gwen Stacy to chase them down with the intent of cutting their heart out with a spoon and defecating in the empty cavity, simultaneously subjecting them to an equally horrific guilt trip and screaming "WHY DID YOU LET ME DIE!? YOU COULD HAVE SAVED ME! RAAAAAAAAAWR!", and making them watch Manos: The Hands of Fate as extra torture.

As mental monsters come from the protagonist's subconscious, their existence is often dependent of their mental state. In this case, even if they are tangible or physically killable, they can only be truly defeated, or at least tamed into subjugation, when the protagonist conquers their fears, gets over their grief, forgives themself for whatever issue they have kept unfairly beating themselves over, or simply moves on and grows as a person. The ordeal may likely be portrayed with a metaphorical Battle in the Center of the Mind. Black Bug Rooms may be full of these things as well.

Compare Tulpa, a similar but independent entity intentionally created through conscious belief instead of subconscious fears, and Living Dream. Also compare And You Were There, if the mental monster serves as an analogue to a person the character knows in real life. If the mental monster just comes from negative emotions and inner evil in general, see The Heartless. May also overlap with Face Your Fears.

Subtrope of Enemy Without. See also Our Monsters Are Weird, Surreal Horror, Sleep Paralysis Creature. Can overlap with Monster of the Aesop.


Examples:

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    Anime and Manga 
  • In Puella Magi Madoka Magica, Witches are bizarre Eldritch Abominations that magical girls must slay to collect the Soul Jar they drop, each with their own familiars and unique Fisher Kingdom-like pocket dimensions called "Barriers" which reflect their broken psyche. However, these creatures are revealed to be former, tortured magical girls who went beyond the Despair Event Horizon, and the Witches are the true expression of a girl's soul and powers. Here are some notable examples:
    • Charlotte the Witch, as her title implies, can create all kinds of sweets and delicacies imaginable, but is cursed with a culinary version of Everything but the Girl in that she cannot create cheese, the food she just so happens to adore the most. Preliminary material released in several guides and The Stinger of the final episode suggests she became this shortly after her wish to eat one last cheesecake with her dying mother was granted, realizing she could have wished to save her instead.
    • Oktavia is an armored, mermaid-like Knight in Shining Armor armed with a BFS who shows Attention Whore tendencies, and several of her lines are some variant of "LOOK AT ME". She is the Witch form of Sakaya, one of the main characters of the series, and Oktavia's demeanor stems from the former's desperate need to get Kyosuke to love her. Her knight's armor is also symbolic of Sakaya's ideal vision of herself as a "hero of justice".
    • Patricia is a spider-like Witch who, were it not for her many arms and lack of a head, would pass off as an ordinary schoolgirl in a surprisingly mundane-looking barrier. Her bio states she and her former self just wanted to be completely normal, acting out ordinary school days just like she did during her former life, with her familiars acting as her classmates.

    Comic Books 
  • In the "Dream Sequence" arc of Finder, the central character is, via brain-computer linkage, the human main server of the MMORPG that he runs. When a monster starts attacking his clients in the game, he eventually realises that it is the personification of his repressed anger at the fanbase, and defeats it by going way beyond I'm Not Afraid of You and having sex with it.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • The Babadook:
    • The titular monster symbolizes Amelia's grief over her husband's death. For most of the film it's a pervasive, Nothing Is Scarier presence that terrifies her young son while she tries ineffectively to drive it away; later, it fully possesses her and tries to make her destroy her family. It's defeated by defying and containing it, since it can be controlled but never fully destroyed.
    • Its Creepy Cockroach motif is also a representation of Amelia's decaying mental state, with swarms of the insects only she can see appearing in her home behind rotting walls.
  • Forbidden Planet: The monster that killed most of the crew of the starship Bellerophon was formed by the equipment left by the Krell, evidently meant to be an improvement over their Matter Replicator technology that would allow them to give form and substance to anything they could imagine. The equipment, however, also gives form and substance to irrationally evil and violent desires lurking deep in the subconscious imagination of every rational being, and the monster the protagonists face is really the Id of Dr. Edward Morbius.
  • Inception: The recurring antagonist, Mal, is a memory of Cobb's late wife who, due to his lingering regret, keeps appearing in the dream missions to sabotage them.
  • Jacob's Ladder is full of Freudian creatures that torment Jacob Singer's dying mind. Their heads twitch and they moan in agony, looking much like the victims of his unit after being attacked by Viet Cong in Vietnam. The film is also rife with Medical Horror, with characters like the eyeless surgeon and his disturbing staff, representing Jacob's inability to let go of his life and die peacefully as the war surgeons try to revive him. Ironically, it's heavily implied these creatures are trying to help Jacob, by forcing him to confront his own death and move on to the afterlife. When he finally accepts it, they disappear, and an image of his dead son appears to guide him to whatever's on the other side as he passes on.
  • This House Has People in It: Though ambiguous, one possible interpretation for the creepy, pink humanoid that lives in the house is that it is a manifestation of Tom and Anne's fear of Lynks Disease taking over their family, explaining why it's wearing Jackson's missing bed-sheet, is as pink as the baby's hat, and causes the lawnmower to be stuck to the ground much like Madison in the main short-film.

    Live-Action TV 
  • In Kamen Rider OOO, the Greeed can insert a Cell Medal into a human's body to spawn a Yummy, a mummy-like creature that generates more Cell Medals by feeding on its host's strongest desire, eventually maturing into an animal-like form. Each Greeed produces Yummy with a different lifecycle related to their name, which fit this trope to varying degrees:
    • The insect Yummies created by Uva (from ubau, "to snatch") grow by consuming their hosts' objects of desire. Later in the series they instead operate by doing things that the host couldn't get away with, with some of them even willing to follow their host's commands to some degree. Notable instances include a conflicted kendo practitioner spawning a pair of samurai-esque beetles, and a man who yearns to "defeat bad guys" receiving a humanoid grasshopper that acts like the original Kamen Rider and can appear from nowhere to attack people he deems evil.
    • Probably the best example in the series is when Dr. Maki tries to ally with the Greeed, claiming that his greatest desire is to destroy the world. To test his convictions they create a Yummy from him... and it takes the form of a crying Ugly Cute creature that feeds by hugging people. Maki is revolted by the thing and immediately wants it dead.

    Video Games 
  • The bosses in Catherine represent various fears that Vincent experiences in his nightmares throughout the game. The story focuses on Vincent's relationship with his girlfriend Katherine, but things get muddled when he meets (and wakes up next to) Catherine. As he and other random men in the city struggle to keep climbing each night just to stay alive, Vincent is confronted by horrific amalgamations that represent his various fears such as committing to his relationship, losing his freedom by getting married, the unwanted possibility of being a father, the possibility that the child might not even be his, being confronted for cheating, and even his own insecurities with his obsessions with being a free man not being weighed down by a relationship. Since every man climbing has their own issues to overcome, they all experience different horrors.
  • Most of the enemies in Cry of Fear have themes of depression, suicide, and mental issues. This all reflects on the protagonist Simon who during the course of the story is writing a book about his issues and so the Simon you play as sees them as malformed monsters. This culminates into the Final Boss of the Good Ending, where the playable Simon has effectively become an embodiment of the real Simon's suicidal side and must be killed by the wheelchair-bound real Simon to avoid killing himself in real life. In the other endings, you play as Book Simon fighting and killing the wheelchair-bound Simon, representing the depression taking him over and his decision to go through with suicide alongside murdering his best friend and/or his doctor in the depths of his despair and/or spite depending on which of the two major choices he screwed up on.
  • Dragon Quest XI implies that this is the case with the all the bosses in Drustan's Labyrinth, with all of them being manifestations of the Hero's animosities, rage, worst excesses, gluttony, deepest fears, fear of failure and self-regard taking the forms of the Spectral Sentinels in reference to the Seven Deadly Sins.
  • The Evil Within: Played with in regard to the many monsters Sebastian encounters. The Symbolic Mutilation-ridden, zombie-like Haunted and Alter Egos are in reality the twisted, corrupted minds of those trapped inside the STEM system. Played straight with other monsters such as Laura, who are born from the Dark and Troubled Past of the Big Bad in control of the system.
  • In Five Nights at Freddy's 4, the twisted, nightmarish incarnations Freddy Fazbear's Pizza's jolly band of murderous mascots are this to the game's child protagonist. The latter appears to be terrified of the animatronic mascots, and is mercilessly bullied by his older brother and his lackeys, who all wear masks of Foxy, Freddy, Bonnie, and Chica respectively. Nightmare Foxy hides inside the closet during gameplay much in the same way the child's brother does to scare him, and Nightmare Fredbear's teeth are tinted red, alluding to how the real Fredbear accidentally bit down into the child's head after the bullies shoved him into the animatronic's mouth as a cruel prank. The incident left him in a comatose state, thus marking the beginning of his Dying Dream, where the main gameplay takes place. Although Five Nights at Freddy's: Sister Location shows an Easter Egg shows the child's bedroom in the hidden room on the cameras, implying that something deeper is going on...
  • Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice: Senua is a Pict warrior traumatized by a Viking raid who is Hearing Voices. Her journey into the underworld to rescue her deceased lover Dillion is seen Through the Eyes of Madness, and the hazards and monsters she faces may simply be manifestations of her traumas. The Big Bad goddess of Hel, Hela speaks with the voice Senua hears in her mind, identified as The Shadow, and The Shadow is the voice of Senua's abusive father Zynbel.
  • If you subscribe to the theory that all of the events in the first Layers of Fear are a hallucination caused by the Artist's broken psyche, then the twitching phantom of his deceased wife may count as this, who killed herself over her horribly scorched appearance after a fire.
  • In The Missing: J.J. Macfield and the Island of Memories, the "Hairshrieker" which occasionally shows up to chase J.J turns out to be a manifestation of her own suicidal urges, wielding a version of the razor she attempted to kill herself with.
  • OMORI has several Nightmare Sequences in which Sunny must face his fears by fending off monstrous apparitions only identified as "Something," each one representing a specific fear. All of them are immune to attacks and can only be defeated by skills of cognition.
  • Outlast II has sections set in the protagonist's childhood Catholic school, and is haunted by a Freudian creature resembling a nude, blood-soaked man, with no lips, nose, or lower jaw, a pulsating Overly-Long Tongue, and a dozen groping arms. As the story progresses, you come to find that it represents Blake's guilt for not seeing the signs of his childhood friend Jessica's sexual abuse. The monster's image is drawn from her abuser, Father Loutermilch, a Pedophile Priest who eventually killed her by accident.
  • Persona:
    • In Persona 4, a character's Shadow is a monster that represents and demonstrates all of the dark, unwanted, hidden sides of that character. While they initially look like humanoid exaggerations of those negative qualities, when denied ("You're not me!") they transform into terrible monsters that will attack the character. The only way to truly get rid of them is for the character to accept them as a part of themselves, at which point they transform into a Persona, a Fighting Spirit that he or she can deploy during fights.
    • Persona 5 introduces Mementos, which reflects the darker nature of everyone who isn't bad or important enough to get a full palace, thus serving as a reflection of the negative parts of society in general.
  • As Psychonauts is a game where you traverse inside the troubled minds of characters, naturally you fight many of these creatures in various instances. A notable — and unexpectedly scary — example is The Butcher: a hulking, Frankesteinian caricature of Coach Oleander's father, who took the bunnies Oleander loved as a child and butchered them for food... right in front of his own son. While he never intended to traumatize Oleander like this, he nonetheless was responsible for Oleander's insanity as well as his Start of Darkness.
  • As a series heavily inspired by Jacob's Ladder, Silent Hill is well known for its surreal and symbolic monsters:
    • Silent Hill: The foggy town is infested with creatures ranging from spooky-yet-conceivable (e.g. Airscreamers, Groaners), to fantastical (e.g. Twinfeelers, Floatstingers), to outright nightmarish (Splithead, Incubus). These creatures represent the fears in the disturbed mind of Allesa Gillespie, a young girl whose tortured life at the hands of The Order drove her mad, and with the mysterious powers of the town, are brought to life.
    • Silent Hill 2 delves possibly the deepest into Psychological Horror, with its litany of bizarre, anatomically impossible creatures. Such creatures include the leggy mannequins, the membrane-bound lying figures, and the rapey Pyramid Head, all having rather sexual designs. Most of them are manifestations of James's sexual frustration and increasing depravity ever since his wife Mary fell terminally ill, and the two Pyramid Heads originate from his guilt of murdering his wife the week before and later Eddie in self-defense, existing for the sole purpose of fulfilling James's desire for karmic punishment because of said guilt. Once he realizes he doesn't need the Pyramid Head to punish him for his sins, they promptly skewer themselves on their own spears.
    • The Raw Shocks in Shattered Memories are a unique example. As part of the psych profile system, these monsters will actively change their appearance throughout the game according to the player's choices and behavior. For example, if Harry cheats on his wife with the women he meets on his journey, the Raw Shocks will adopt uncanny, feminine sexual traits. If he drinks alcohol and takes drugs without restraint, the monsters will look disgustingly rotten and decayed.

    Webcomics 
  • Alienby Comics: In "Inner Demons", Riri pictures their anxiety, depression and gender dysphoria as monsters that torment them but can be overcome through coping mechanisms.
    Riri: I see Anxiety as a smoldering thorny hound who breathes fire at my belly (explaining the burning sensation I often feel when I’m anxious). Depression is a sluggish, tentacled grim reaper that drags me down into the depths of despair where I’m left to drown. Dysphoria is a backwards upside down monster with limbs and fingers jutting out every which way, with mirror shards stuck in its body, weaponizing my own reflection against me. I think it’s good to visualize these obstacles as entities separate from myself. I am more than my Depression, Anxiety, and Gender Dysphoria, and they are not me.

    Western Animation 


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